Voice of Experience: Maria Castañón Moats, Chief Diversity Officer, PwC

Maria MoatsAccording to Maria Castañón Moats, Chief Diversity Officer at PwC, simply acknowledging diversity isn’t enough to unlock its benefits – companies must engage with diversity to really experience its value. “I’m getting out there and talking to different people in practice about why it’s important for us to engage with each other when it comes to diversity,” she said.

“Think about behaviors – like inclusion. We need to understand not only how we are similar, but we need to understand how we are different.”

“Taking an interest in that difference and leveraging that makes us better as a team,” she explained. “If we could all behave as advocates for one another, think of how powerful that would be.”

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Intrepid Woman: How I Got My Career Back on Track as a New Mom

kellycepedaContributed by Kelly Cepeda

I lost my job at Goldman Sachs in the midst of the 2009 economic meltdown, and soon after, I found out I was expecting my first child. Taking a break from work to spend time with my baby was something I had always looked forward to, so I thought the timing was perfect. It wasn’t until the start of 2011, when my son turned a year old and I felt that he was ready to be “let out into the world,” that I realized how much time had actually gone by.

As I began to revise my resume and speak to people in the financial industry, I realized how far I had fallen behind my peers. The gap in my resume was daunting. Would someone really want to hire me after I had been away from the corporate setting for such a long time? I realized that choosing to be a stay-at-home mom had taken a toll on my self-confidence, but there was no way I was going to get anywhere feeling sorry for myself. I had the relevant experience, and I had worked for excellent firms, including New York Life, Bears, and Goldman Sachs, and I had an unbeatable enthusiasm about returning to work. Why not hire me?

Well, I can tell you, not too many people appreciated that I took leave from my career to be there for my son, in his first year of life, and most were not shy to express this. To make matters worse, there were those who poked fun by calling me a big dreamer for believing that I could still have a career. If my so-called friends thought this way, then what would actual employers say? One friend even suggested that I lie about the reason I chose to take time off – to actually deny having my baby! To me, choosing to be a stay-at-home mom was a gift. I was very proud of having made this choice, and there was no way I was going to hide it.

Hearing these negative voices made things even more challenging. I have always been a dreamer, a trait that has enabled me to visualize the life I want to have and follow the right path to make those dreams come true.

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EU Moving Forward with Gender Quotas

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business womanBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last Year, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding encouraged companies to pledge to increase the representation on their corporate boards significantly. She said it was companies’ “last chance” at self-regulation – and she meant it.

The deadline for companies to commit to raising the percentage of women board directors is today – International Women’s Day – and based on the unsatisfactory turnout (only 24 companies), Reding said, it may now be time for quotas.

The New York Times reported:

“France and other countries with legally binding quotas have made the most progress in placing women in top business positions, Ms. Reding said during an interview Friday in advance of her announcement. E.U.-wide rules were now needed, she said.

“‘Personally, I don’t like quotas,’ Ms. Reding said. ‘But I like what the quotas do. Quotas open the way to equality and they break through the glass ceiling.’ Countries that have quotas ‘bring the results,’ she said.”

Reding will begin meeting with governments, unions, companies, and other groups through the spring, and plan the details of the law enacting boardroom gender quotas across the EU. She told the Times, “Let all those who are concerned come in and say how we should proceed.”

One thing is for sure: Reding doesn’t seem to be bluffing.

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Three Challenges to Demonstrate Real Power on International Women’s Day: Women Helping Women

iStock_000019485965XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

A lot of talk gets made about so-called “mean girls” in the workplace – women who disparage other women, women who gossip, women who hold one another back. Workplace bullying is a problem, but the “mean girl” stereotype just doesn’t hold true for the majority of women. Based on the numbers in a 2007 study, only 15% of women in the US have been bullied by other women at work. And, in fact, a new study out of Switzerland shows that female leaders are more benevolent than their male counterparts.

The “mean girl” stereotype is unfairly giving women a bad reputation, and it’s drawing away our power to advance.

In the same vein, we don’t hear enough about the women who have helped us every day throughout our careers, women who have taken a chance on us, and women who have given us a hand up the ladder. According to Gloria Feldt, activist, former president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, embracing power frequently means embracing it alongside other women.

She said, “In my research for No Excuses, I found women are able to embrace power enthusiastically when we think of it as the expansive ‘power to’ rather than the oppressive traditional ‘power over.’ And one of the best ways to express the power to is to join hands with other women. We all got where we are because of women who came before us and each of us has the obligation to bring another women with her as we move through a door or up a ladder.”

“There’s a parable of the mother with five daughters. She asked each of them to bring two sticks to her. She had them try to break one stick, which they easily did. Then she asked them to put their remaining five sticks together and try to break them – they couldn’t do it. Similarly, we women are all stronger when we stand together and when we mentor and sponsor each other in our careers,” Feldt added.

Real power is the ability to help someone else. As Cynthia Steer, Head of Manager Research & Investment Solutions at BNY Mellon, told us last week: “I can’t remember a time when a woman hasn’t helped me.” This year, for International Women’s Day, let’s shine a spotlight on our real power and showcase the women who’ve helped us along the way.

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Courage and Authenticity: How Women Exercise Power

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Team portrait of happy businesswomen in officeBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“There will be people who… will wish you had just kept your mouth shut,” said Anita Hill, discussing the challenges women face when speaking in the face of adversity. “But you have to deal with reasserting yourself, and being your authentic self.”

Hill was speaking at the National Council for Research on Women’s annual awards dinner last night, and she commented passionately on the importance of having courage. Hill said, had she known the outcome of her 1991 televised testimony on sexual harassment claims against US Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, and the character and credibility smear she endured afterward, she still would have gone through with it.

Honorees for the night included Soledad O’Brien, CNN Anchor and Special Correspondent; Beth Brooke, Global Vice Chair, Public Policy, Ernst & Young; Anita Hill, Senior Advisor to the Provost, Professor of Law, Public Policy and Women’s Studies, Brandeis University; and the creators of the PBS Series Women, War & Peace, Abigail Disney, Pamela Hogan, and Gini Reticker.

Speaking on the panel, Hill was joined by O’Brien, Brooke, and Disney, discussing the nature of courage, authenticity, and power.

“When it comes to women and leadership, many of them get into leadership because of something that happens to them and they have to do it,” Hill said. “They care about a problem and they want it addressed and know they have something to add.”

“Find an issue you are passionate about and become the leader to address it.”

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What to Do If You Experience Gender Bias

Three serious business people talking in boardroomBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Oftentimes, the problem with gender bias is that it acts like a filter, affecting how we see people, what we notice about them, and how we interpret their behavior. If you’re human, you have biases, and like other stereotypes, assumptions about a person based on their gender are made automatically. Both men and women are guilty of bias, but in the workplace it’s women who pay the ultimate price for these biases.

According to Iris Bohnet, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the director of its Women and Public Policy Program, even those with the best intentions who don’t want to discriminate are likely to fall prey to stereotypes they’ve come to believe are emblematic of how society works.

“In today’s society seeing is believing, so if you don’t see women in leadership positions, you don’t naturally associate women with leadership,” Bohnet said.

Because hidden gender bias is automatically triggered, it should be thought of as a negative impulse that you fight to control. Bohnet has made an interesting connection between gender bias and studies concerning image, nutrition, and saving money: things that require intention: things we know we should do, but we don’t do because it’s easier not to – like being on a diet.

“The key to fighting gender bias is changing the environment so that being biased becomes more difficult,” Bohnet said. “When you’re on a diet, you’re not going to keep ice cream in your refrigerator. If bad food is available, you will eat it. Changing the environment so that it becomes more difficult to eat poorly or so that it becomes more difficult to discriminate against women can make all the difference.”

According to Bohnet, doing the right thing and creating the right environment requires a “nudge.” Bohnet took inspiration from the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, which focuses on choice architecture – how outcomes might be influenced – or nudged – by how choices are presented.

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Getting on Board: Advice for Minority Women on Pursuing Board Service

iStock_000016000964XSmallBy Robin Madell (San Francisco)

Three percent. That dismal number reflects the number of overall board seats held by women of color directors among Fortune 500 companies in 2011, according to Catalyst’s latest study on Women on Boards.

We may have grown weary of seeing numbers under 20 percent for women’s total board membership—in the United States, the latest figure is 16.1 percent, with the vast majority of countries studied posting even lower numbers. Yet when we scrutinize the data still further, we see that most board seats in women’s too-small slice of the pie—13.1 percent—are held by white women.

In fact, Catalyst’s research shows that when we look at individual companies, almost 71 percent have zero women of color directors serving on their board. Asian women and Latinas are particularly underrepresented when we examine the data for all women directors, holding only 2.5 percent and 4.9 percent of seats, respectively. Black women account for only 11.3 percent of all women directors.

How can we change this situation? Beth Stewart, CEO of Trewstar, which specializes in the placement of women on boards, says that companies need to make adding minority women to boards a specific priority. She explains, “This means that when they come up with a long list of very specific criteria, they need to choose race as the determining factor and not, for instance, supply chain management experience in China. Find that in the next white guy, and accept any type of high level business experience from a minority candidate.”

Stewart emphasizes that this does not mean lowering the criteria, but broadening it. “For example, if you were looking for someone who was a CFO and you find someone who is EVP for Technology, take the EVP for Tech and find the finance person in some other form—or add two directors,” says Stewart.

Other organizations, like the Robert Toigo Foundation, are also hard at work on the problem. Among Toigo’s initiatives is All A Board, a program for connecting boards with diverse candidates.

The program allows women and minority professionals interested in board service to use a free online tool to designate areas of interest and showcase their areas of expertise. The Toigo team uses these profiles to help connect board candidates with public and private companies, nonprofits, and foundations that are looking for leadership talent.

Nancy Sims, president of the Robert Toigo Foundation, also provided advice on what minority and multicultural women can do to improve their chances of landing a board seat—and what companies can do to help facilitate their efforts.

“The pipeline is growing,” says Sims. “But there is more to be done to both prepare women and minorities for board service—and to prepare boards for a change of composition. Creating a bigger supply, or pool of talent, without prompting an increased demand for the talent is only half of a solution. We need both the supply and the demand to expand for greater board diversity to occur.”

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Movers and Shakers: Lynne Laube, President and COO, Cardlytics Inc.

LynneLaubeBy Robin Madell, San Francisco

Tradition may come to mind before innovation when thinking about the financial services industry. But for Lynne Laube, president and COO of Cardlytics, Inc., innovation has consistently come first. “I have always been excited by innovation and knew that was where I wanted to focus my career,” she explained.

After starting her career at Bank One and then spending 13 years at Capital One, most recently as vice president and COO, Laube decided to take a more entrepreneurial route. She co-founded Cardlytics, which offers targeted advertising within banking, in the summer of 2008 with Scott Grimes, Cardlytics CEO. Yet even while serving in her earlier roles in banking, Laube was always on the lookout for opportunities to innovate—and found several.

Over the years, Laube worked on products that have since become ubiquitous in the industry, but at the time were cutting-edge, such as balance transfer, micro-business lending, and private-label lending. “I love creating new products, building new businesses, and trying new models,” she said. “When I joined Capital One, they were at the forefront of innovation within consumer and business lending.”

Toward the end of her tenure, she began focusing on payment innovation, and played a major role in the creation of decoupled debit, a groundbreaking and controversial product. While the product ultimately was unsuccessful, Laube’s work in this area helped her see the potential for other innovations with financial services. “I suspected it would be easier to innovate from a new company rather than within the walls of a very large bank, and that is when I left Capital One and started Cardlytics,” she said.

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Does Work/Life Balance Mean Sacrifice?

iStock_000008507186XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to a new study by Accenture, work life balance is becoming the norm. The survey polled almost 4000 male and female executives in 31 countries around the globe, and almost three quarters of respondents (71%) said they have work life balance all or most of the time.

“It was higher than I expected,” said Nellie Borrero, Diversity and Inclusion lead at Accenture. “Several years ago, we may have seen a different answer.”

Nevertheless, the survey, entitled “The Path Forward,” revealed some challenging data. Despite the high percentage of executives who said they had work/life balance, 41% said their career had had a negative impact on their family. In addition, 42% said they often sacrifice time with their family to succeed.

The survey might show that work/life balance is taking on a new understanding – an acknowledgement that ‘having it all’ is not a reality. Balance means there are always going to be sacrifices when it comes to work and family, and that making those sacrifices is okay.

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Thought Leaders: Cynthia Steer, Head of Manager Research & Investment Solutions, BNY Mellon

thought-leadershipAccording to Cynthia Steer, Head of Manager Research & Investment Solutions at BNY Mellon, the benefit of a mentoring relationship comes down to learning. “You always learn something from sitting down with someone else,” she explained. “Women are always managing something else – whether it’s your job, your marriage, your family – and there’s always something one can learn about. It’s very simple.”

“I’ve always been a mentor and I’ve always learned more than I gave,” she continued. Steer explained that she quickly figured out the value of cross-generational relationships when she began her career on a team managing foreign exchange rates. “The team was made up of new kids on the block like me and seasoned individuals – and I saw that every perspective was valuable, but the combination was more valuable than the discrete parts.”

“Portfolio management is like fashion in that it always needs to be remade at the edges, with new thinking or new foci, and having multiple generations’ perspectives furthers that.”

She added, “Also, I think it’s vitally important for women like me at this point in my career to stand up in front of the room and be counted. I’m always humbled by the opportunity to do it.”

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